We are at the end of our literary journey. All that remains to do is pack, check out, and depart. What will we put in our bags? Our belongings: souvenirs, gifts, and, of course, our books. And our knowledge that the time that we spent in these rooms will probably not leave a substantial trace. New guests will come to exercise their right over these temporary homes. They will see themselves reflected in the room's mirror, will rear-range pieces of furniture, move accessories. They will put their clothes in the closet, lie on the bed and press their bodies onto its mattress. New people will use these hotels in new ways, make their own experiences here, build new memories.

Still, we will remember our visits, and we know that they may leave a more permanent trace in our biography. As we visited hotel after hotel, witnessed, shared, and dissected the protagonists' struggles, we became characters ourselves, connected our own experiences, in real twentieth- and twenty-first-century hotels, to theirs. Even if just for a brief moment, we became the missing roommate who heard them when nobody else could or would. We embraced their stories: Else, Christine, Karl and all the others now populate our own imaginary hotel, and we want to tell them “Just open the door, there are many like you, you are not the only Mensch in this hotel!” Yet is that not what happened, in a way?